Rumor out of Texas has it that the elder Bush will vote for Hillary Clinton. No word of denial issues from Pater, Dubya or Jeb.  

Thus, the fair minded conclude that this spectacularly unsuccessful one term President is not content with the mere achievement of failure in office -- scattering the Reagan coalition and handing the country to Bill Clinton in 1992 was a feat of political incompetence that at the time seemed beyond human capacity -- the old man now essays to add betrayal of his voter base to his sorry resume.

If any doubt remained about the philosophical treachery and political incompetence of this clan of faux Texas Northeast squires, its patriarch, uncontradicted by either son, has removed all doubt for all time.    

In contemporary society, where any event more remote than last year’s Academy Awards is ancient history, it’s easy to forget how recently America seemed safe from the destructive manias of the Left. But that was before the care of Ronald Reagan’s great political achievements fell into the hands of George Herbert Walker Bush.

In the 1988 election, Bush won the presidency in a walk, floating to the White House on a sea of affection for Ronald Reagan and his policies.  With that victory, Republicans had won five out of six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988, almost all by landslides.

The story of how the conservative electoral coalition of those times was turned to mush in four short years by the detached, politically clueless, tone-deaf presidency of the elder Bush is not complicated.

First and above all was the patrician Bush’s barely concealed contempt for his great predecessor -- “I want a kinder, gentler America,” Bush said, to which Nancy Reagan replied, ”Kinder than who?”  She understood the snarky meaning and against whom it was directed.

The rest of us heard that infamous phrase and inferred its more ominous import: This man does not understand what Reagan achieved or how he achieved it and he’s going to spoil it all.

Add to Bush’s contempt for his predecessor his unfailing ability to project aristocratic remoteness from the lives of ordinary Americans, and his astonishingly misguided belief that no political penalty would attach for raising taxes after trumpeting a promise not to, and you have the essence of the story. 

In four short years, Bush Senior managed to alienate enough of the Reagan coalition to throw the presidency to an obscure small state governor who got all of 43% of the vote, i.e., the Democratic voter base.

One would think that such a political feat would suffice for a lifetime. One would be wrong.

In the years following Clinton’s presidency the elder Bush, groveling for the public approval that had eluded him in office, repeatedly hob-nobbed with the vile Bill Clinton in some of the latter’s faux charity scams, thereby doing as much as anyone to add undeserved luster to the man who had vanquished him and to obscure from public notice the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Clinton Foundation and all its activities.    

After all this, after presidential failure and personally motivated post presidential sucking up to the Clintons, Bush père now adds the final betrayal, the one that will never be forgiven: trying to throw the millions of middle and working class voters who made his career under the bus. 

Say the following sentence slowly, so it can sink in:

George Herbert Walker Bush, no more than a footnote to history if Ronald Reagan hadn’t elevated him to the Vice Presidency, urges that the Democratic Party’s crazy Left be given another eight years of total control, during which, as I’ve said before, it will complete its work of turning America into a third world, one Party hell hole.

Behold! The man who already gave us eight years of the execrable Clintons is trying to give us another eight.

Here’s a partial list of what George Herbert Walker Bush prefers to the presidency of his own Party’s nominee, a man who looks more solid, sensible, conservative and patriotic every day:

Eight more years of mass immigration that’s destroying the schools and neighborhoods of those who voted for him and his son, and that will shortly render demographically moot any opposition to dominance of the American presidency by the Left;

Eight more years of a timid, apologetic, politically correct, feckless defense of America and its allies against the threat of radical Islamist violence that hangs over the entire West;

Eight more years of diminishing freedom of speech and religion that has already sharply reduced Americans’ right to express their views and practice their religion without fear of expulsion from school, economic reprisal, or worse;

Eight more years of a government-surfeited, over taxed and over regulated economy that is rapidly diminishing America’s ability to protect its interests and affect events in the world, while at the same time it reduces large percentages of America’s population to government dependency;

Eight more years of officially promoted lies that America and its police are racist, lies that are poisoning public discourse and pushing the country dangerously towards violence;

Eight more years of ruinous Obamacare, that is enormously increasing costs and diminishing quality of medical care to those who voted for Bush senior and his son, and that is conferring huge benefits on those who are here illegally;

And, of course, a Supreme Court and federal judiciary that from day one of Clinton’s presidency will enforce the entire odious edifice of Leftist rule while rolling back once secure constitutional rights guaranteed by the first and second amendments.

Space restrictions require truncating the list of what Mr. Bush Senior wants his country to endure so he can get his personal revenge. Readers can fill in the omissions.

On a happier note Ted Cruz last Friday announced his support for Mr. Trump. Welcome aboard, Ted.  We knew your patriotism and clear thinking would prevail in the end.

As to the decision of the Bush family to bring the temple down on all of us, it would take Shakespeare’s gifts to fashion a denunciation appropriate to magnitude of the treachery. Suffice to say for now that the American story contains no political betrayal at the presidential level remotely approaching this.

Whether Trump wins or loses, it is devoutly to be hoped that justice will be served, that father son and brother will live out their lives forgotten and shunned by the American middle and working classes whose welfare was of so little concern to them.